Saturday 21st January 2023,
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The Ukraine War.
Does the war in Ukraine represent a high-stakes threat not just to Western values, but to global stability itself?
Speaker: Michael Clarke
Professor Michael Clark was appointed in 1995 as Professor of Defence Studies at King’s College London and remains a Visiting Professor there. He was Director of the Royal United Services Institute until 2015. In 2004 he was appointed as the UK member of the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. He has been a Guest Fellow at The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, and a Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. Since 2016 he has been an advisor to the Joint Committee on National Security Strategy, and he is currently Associate Director of the Strategy and Security Institute at Exeter University.
Saturday 11th February 2023, 11 am-12 noon.
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Housing Crisis: a Vision for the Common Good?
Around 8 million people in England live in overcrowded, unaffordable, or unsuitable homes. Simply building more houses – while important – is not sufficient to address the prolonged housing issues this country continues to face. What might housing justice look like in north east England, and how can we help to achieve it?
Ref: www.churchhousingfoundation.org
Speaker: Chris Beales
Chris Beales is a member of the Executive Team implementing the recommendations of ‘Coming Home’, the report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and the Community, which was launched in February 2021. He is an ordained Anglican minister and a social entrepreneur who is currently working in housing and education and on issues of faith and economy, locally, nationally and internationally. In an advisory professional role he pioneered the Government’s work with faith communities. He is the author of various books and articles in journals, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and Visiting Fellow at St John’s College, Durham University, where from 2017-2019 he was also William Leech Research Fellow.
Saturday 18th March 2023,
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‘Level or Not?’ Why the provision of general practice in England is unfair.
General practice, the backbone of the NHS, is in crisis. Dr Fisher will discuss its role in tackling health inequalities in the UK, and explain why Government must act to ‘level up’ general practice.
Speaker: Rebecca Fisher
Dr Rebecca Fisher is a Senior Policy Fellow with The Health Foundation, an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and health care for people in the UK. She leads policy work on primary care and general practice, and has a particular interest in equity in primary care provision. A practicing doctor, she usually works two days a week as a GP in an area of urban high deprivation but, as the 2022-3 Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice, she is currently working in San Francisco. She did her medical training at the University of Cambridge. She completed her GP training and an Academic Clinical Fellowship in Oxford, where her research focussed on effective delivery of out-of-hours primary care. Alongside these roles, she was a teaching Fellow at Green Templeton College. Dr Fisher co-founded Next Generation GP, a national leadership programme for early-career GPs.
Saturday 22nd April 2023,
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Climate action after COP27.
Prof Gills will address the post-COP27 situation, including recent research on global climate tipping points, emissions growth, ecological crisis, limitations of the COP process and the politics of climate action.
Speaker: Barry Gills
Professor Barry Gills is Professor of Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is a core member of ExAlt, the Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (www.exalt.fi), and Editor in Chief of Globalizations journal (Routledge). He is an Associate of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam and a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. He has recently been working on Economics and Climate Emergency, global extractivism, post Covid transformations, and the pluriverse and post capitalist alternatives.
Saturday 13th May,
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‘No Safe Passage to Safety.’ The need for a review of the UN’s definition of a Refugee.
Refugees and asylum seekers feature almost daily in press reports. The Government’s varied and variable responses raise issues of the moral and ethical foundation of UK policy. This talk will examine the protection and legal representation to which migrants are entitled under international human rights law, as well as issues such as forced displacement, humanitarian regimes, and refugee camps, mainly in the UK context.
Speaker: Abraham Eiluorior
Abraham Eiluorior is co-deputy director of the Centre for Law and Global Justice at Durham University, where he is also a part-time tutor. He was awarded an LLB (first-class Hons) from the University of Bradford, where he studied under their Sanctuary Scholarship programme, and an LLM in International Law and Governance from Durham University. He has been a Longford Trust scholar since 2018. He campaigns for LGBQT and migrants’ welfare, rights and justice, advising vulnerable and marginalised asylum seekers, refugees and migrants in the NE on a wide range of issues, including access to legal advice around the asylum application process. He sits on Liberty’s Policy Council, is a trustee of several refugee groups, and has been vice-chair of Sunderland City of Sanctuary since 2015. In 2017 he co-founded Sunderland Rainbow Sanctuary Seekers group.
Saturday 10th June 2023,
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Truth & Integrity in International Politics
In an era of multiple challenges – among them, climate breakdown, a world economy working against common interests, pandemics and wars – we need political systems that promote truth and integrity rather than self-seeking populists and breathtaking wealth. What can we do to promote such a change and could there be a role for a middle-level power like the UK?
Speaker: Paul Rogers
Professor Paul Rogers is Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University ans international security advisor to Open Democracy, to which he contributed a weekly column for twenty years. He has lectured in Britain’s senior defence colleges for 35 years and is also a long-time member of CND. The fourth edition of his book Losing Control: Global security in 21st century is published by Pluto Press.
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